RHIC Collider Creates Quark-Gluon Plasma at 4,000,000,000,000 Degrees Celsius
Hottest matter ever created in a lab; may have induced law-of-nature-warping bubble Until the LHC finally gets up to full speed, Brookhaven National Lab's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) remains the world's most powerful heavy ion smasher. And on Monday, they showed off some of that power by announcing that a recent collision resulted in the hottest matter ever recorded. Coming in at a scorching 7.2 trillion degrees Fahrenheit, the plasma not only recreated the environment of the Big Bang, but might have also resulted in the temporary formation of a bubble within which some normal laws of physics did not apply. The plasma, which was 250,000 times hotter than the center of the sun, seemed to create small pockets where particles lost their left- or right-handed identity. All particles have a specific spin direction that dictates different behaviors, and many chemical compounds have an orientation that makes mirror-image molecules...